Listening to this collection of light, airy yet surprisingly intelligent songs is like sinking into a feather bed: it's soft, it's easy and you're never going to get up -- but in this case, if you do drift off, it will be to pleasant and slightly twisted dreams of poolside romance, English gardens and the demise of the dinosaurs. In his second solo album, Mike Uva (once of The Emily Rock Group) turns in an almost textbook example of jangly-pop perfection. Folk-tinged chords rise like a haze of melody, with lyrics dropped low and sometimes dropped altogether. It's the Bevis Frond in an especially acoustic mood or Elliott Smith in a bittersweet one.
The disc starts with the gentle, accordion-cushioned "Stuck in My Head", a rueful backward look at a girl who got away. Situated somewhere between denial and acceptance, the song calmly observes an absence that is almost not painful anymore. The lilting chorus says one thing with words -- "And if I never hear another song off that Buffalo Springfield record again / it'll be too soon" -- and another with its breezy tune. Similarly, "Quickening" relives a summer romance gone by with the gentlest kind of regret. "What would you give / for one quickening to relive a summer love / but she does not feel the same way," Uva sings, but his tone is almost jauntily detached.
Although this is clearly a personal, one-man project, Uva draws additional textures and sounds from the musicians who join him, including Emily Rock Group drummer Jason Weiner, Matthew Charbonneau on double bass and Chris Frohring on keyboards. Don Depew (Cobra Verde, Guided by Voices) engineered, mixed and provided loops; his impact is most apparent in the electronically adventurous "Smile" and "Fine Once We Start".
Uva also enlists Cobra Verde bassist Ed Sotelo for "Protective Lotion", the disc's standout track. The song succeeds mostly on the strength of its easy, slow-circling melody and sensual lyrics. The story is pretty simple: the song's main character, down on his luck, is working as a pool boy, spots a gorgeous woman and offers some UV (if not Uva) block. Still, the lyrics are so tightly coiled, the song so loosely sexy, that it's almost a novel in itself. "She looked at me suspicious, dripping and delicious / and she asked me, do I look the amateur?" Yet by the song's end, our hero is, in fact, gently motioning that protective lotion all over her body.
"Dinosaurs", one of four tracks to feature the breathy vocals of Courtney Christenson, is another winner. With its tight harmonies, melodic warmth and bleakly evocative lyrics, it might remind you a little of The Mendoza Line's articulate country-pop, or a less resolutely cheerful Aberfeldy. And finally, Uva stands very well all by himself -- particularly on "English Garden", a jangly, sweet, trippy haze of a song, again commemorating a summer romance.
Where Have You Been exerts the lightest possible touch, brushing by with a slight breeze and leading you softly into a place for dreams. Summer afternoons remembered in winter, transient loves recollected in solitude, fragile melodies etched into hazy sounds -- they're all here in this oblique and lovely record.
